


Five times they were forced to share a bed (and one time they weren’t)

by seaweedredandbrown



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alcohol, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Bedsharing, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Non-Sexual Intimacy, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 01:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14581650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedredandbrown/pseuds/seaweedredandbrown
Summary: Six nights shared by Dr Hermann Gottlieb and Dr Newton "Newt" Geiszler, as as many vignettes of their developing relationship.





	Five times they were forced to share a bed (and one time they weren’t)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [retrovertigo (ellameno)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellameno/gifts).



**1.**

The year is 2017. They’ve been communicating online for three years, and in those three years they’ve built something that isn’t love but definitely isn’t a friendship either; a nameless affection, a mutual understanding, a bond ebbing and flowing between them; the tacit agreement that they are two of a kind and better off with the other in their lives.

They’ve been in each other’s presence for eight hours now.

In the span of those eight hours, they have: \- exchanged awkward greetings;  
\- discussed their respective theories;  
\- tried to keep their voices down;  
\- made derogatory remarks on sense of fashion and-slash-or emotional maturity;  
\- given up all pretence at not arguing with each other in the middle of a quiet little café;  
\- insulted each other in English;  
\- been thrown out of the aforementioned quiet little café;  
\- insulted each other in German;  
\- parted ways;  
\- aimlessly wandered on the shores of the Danube (each in opposite directions);  
\- remembered that they did book a hotel room together (purely for cost efficiency: they were both asexual, it had made sense at the time);  
\- desperately attempted to find another accommodation;  
\- failed;  
\- swallowed their pride and walked back to the hotel, hoping against all odds that he would not do the same.

Except that he does, obviously.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it? They’ve always found in each other a mirror of their own feelings, hopes and aspirations; and thus he mirrors their stupor, despair, and frustration. They have been looking so much forward to this. They have spent so much time wondering what would happen, how it would happen, and to which extent a fantasy of written words and VOIP calls would translate to a reality of flesh, bones, size difference, smells and outfits. They thought they were ready for anything— anything except that it would all end in a cheap hotel room in Vienna, in the middle of January.

Vienna, or better yet the Danube region, is not the friendliest of places in winter. The river froze in December and now it lies still in its bed, a large snake of white-blue-grey shining its way through the city until warmer winds start breaking its surface. While naval traffic slowly resumes, boats and carriers make way through the snake’s maw, frozen peaks of ice still springing from each shore in as many stalagmites.

The bed feels even colder than the river’s.

The heater isn’t malfunctioning— they’ve both checked, one after the other, following their silent agreement not to engage in any way— but they are shivering. The cold bites through the duvet, the bed sheet, their pyjamas. Each crease feels like another icicle jabbing at their skin. They toss and they turn, doing their best not to brush the other. Their teeth chatter and their breaths condense in the air; there is no comfort to be found that night.

Newt checks his phone, throws it back in the darkness, sighs loudly, gets up, grabs it, and tries to lose himself in the mesmerising blue glare of the screen.

Hermann tries to lay still, considers reading a book, decides against it, considers listening to soft music, scoffs at the mere thought that this could distract him in any way.

The silence is deafening. Even with their mouths closed, they’re still shouting.

‘Why are you like this?’

‘Why aren’t you who I wanted you to be?’

The night provides no answer as bitterness and regret slither around them. When the grey light of dawn peeks through the drawn curtains, Newt has dozed off to a restless slumber; Hermann slides out of the bed in silence, cancels the alarm on his phone and leaves as quickly as he can.

There is no need for good-byes: they both hope they’ll never see the other again.

———

**2.**

There shouldn’t be a second time. They hate each other, or rather they are both immensely disappointed that the man they'd admired so much apparently hates them. The difference is slight but crucial.

Hermann doesn’t notice said difference and decides not to dwell on the matter any further. The world is ending; he’s got work to do and compartmentalising has proven a very effective coping mechanism s far.

Newt spends the better part of a year over-analysing himself, Hermann, what he remembers, what he thinks has happened, what he wishes had. He cannot let go, no matter how hard he tries; the more he tries, the less he forgets.

Of course, they are both assigned to the Hong Kong Shatterdome roughly two weeks after Newt has finally stopped dwelling on it and deemed himself ready to move on. Hermann is very professional when they meet at the airport, and remains so even when they are told that due to a clerical error, they are to share the same room. A very apologetic Tendo Choi explains: Their names both start with G, they’re both doctors, they both requested accessible accommodations. Whoever’s in charge is very new, English isn’t their mother tongue, they’re not used to the latin alphabet; the list of excuses go on and on.

Then, Newt sees it— a flash of irritation on the most aesthetically pleasing face he’s even seen; those thin lips merged into a stern line— it’s gone in an instant.

“Very well,” Hermann says. He taps his cane and nods. “Give the room to Dr Geiszler. I shall find myself a hotel and report for duty in the morning.”

“What— no. No. No, no, no.” Newt reaches out his arms and smiles. “Give the room to Dr Gottlieb here, I’ll get my own room in town, wouldn’t want to be an inconvenience.”

“Believe me, Dr Geiszler, booking my own room isn’t going to be an inconvenience compared to—”

“Compared to _what_ , Dr Gottlieb?”

Newt is still smiling. Tendo steps between them, hands raised in appeasement. “Why don’t we have a look at the room first?” he offers with a charming smile. “Ah, let me show you the rest of the facilities— see, this is the main lab over there, and this…”

The lab too, they’re apparently going to share, and one argument leads to the next until it is way too late to find a hotel. Neither of them would send the other to sleep at his desk, though, nor would he resolve to be the one doing so, and thus here they are.

The accommodations they have been assigned come with windows— a luxury, as they will later learn— no air conditioning— on account of the presence of windows— and all the standards features expected of quarters designed to host two people in a romantic relationship.

August in Hong Kong is an uncomfortable affair; the heat and the humidity have both risen to levels the likes of which even the locals struggle to bear.

The summer night presses on them like a physical weight and they could drown in their own sweat; every single movement seems superfluous; even breathing is too much after a while. If they do not move, if they do not breathe, they can pretend that they’re alone.

They lay in bed for what feels like hours.

Jet lag is not helping.

Or maybe it is.

At some point, they sleep.

———

**3.**

The amount of alcohol they both ingested at Tendo's wedding ought to have, if not killed them, at least incapacitated them in some way.

After a display of very, very, absolutely cringe-worthy intimate knowledge of Chinese karaoke classics and three failed attempts at congratulating the wrong bride— Alison Choi does not look like any of her maids at all, but to be fair, everyone look the same when they've hit that sweet spot and they’re gently swimming in an alcohol-blurred sea of colours and textures— they fell asleep on top of each other, in a mess of creased shirts, stained vests and precise German snoring.

They do not remember it in the morning.

They do not remember how they wake up either.

To be fair they do not remember much until another twelve hours later, when the headaches hit.

K-Science enjoys a lavish three days free of the loudest signs of their animosity.

———

**4.**

The next time happens years later, when they’re the last ones left in the lab. The lines between ‘workplace’ and ‘living quarters’ are starting to blur: there’s another microwave in there, one that’s labelled “DR GOTTLIEB’S FOOD ONLY” and thus never used neither by Dr Gottlieb nor for food; there’s a keyboard; there’s a mini-fridge; there’s a stock of baby wipes; there’s a couch.

It’s autumn in the world outside the concrete walls of the Shatterdome. A mist rolls in from the harbour in the very early morning. The chill and the rain never quite let up. There’s an illusion of peace and economic vigorousness: there hasn’t been a kaiju attack in a few weeks and Hermann doesn’t predict another one until at least a month. But in the green-yellow light of the lab, there is nothing such as peace, there isn’t even a thing such as seasons. The samples require to be kept at constant temperature, and the two scientists require to be kept in a state of incessant bickering. That’s how they strike sparks, as the phrase goes; that’s how they keep each other going when nothing else will. Turns out there is something as too much coffee, there is something as one too many all-nighters, there is something as too many losses and too many near-misses; there’s never such a thing as too many victories or too much bickering.

And if they’re both sitting on the couch while they argue, because their feet won’t quite carry them anymore; and if they both fall asleep, Newt’s head resting heavy and warm against Hermann’s shoulder; and if they never talk about it, if they pretend it hasn’t happened— if morning comes and finds them huddling for warmth, shivering and sleep-hungover, stranger things have happened in times of war, and there is no need for either of them to talk about it.

(Newt obsesses over it, of course, no matter how much he tells himself he doesn’t; until the next attack, the next sample batch, the next shiny new crazy idea.

Hermann rationalises it; they were tired and one doesn’t control one’s body when one is fast asleep anyway. The years and the necessity of their collaborating may have softened their relationship, but he has no doubt that Dr Geiszler would be better off without his company.)

———

**5.**

It’s winter again, the time after that. It’s January, like that first night in Vienna.

The year is 2025 and they’ve just won the war. They’ve done it. They really did! They went ahead and did it; one, two and a three-way Drift. Their noses bleed and their eyes are circled red, but what’s a little eye horror when one just saved the world? They’ll be sent to medbay in the morning, but what does the morning matter when the night is still so young? When everyone wants to congratulate them, embrace them, celebrate them? Oh, it’s been a team effort, that’s for sure, but with so many losses, the survivors must also shoulder the accolades of the fallen.

Hermann and Newt feed off each other’s energy as the Shatterdome erupts in cheers and impromptu partying. They are tangled in the strongest Ghost Drift in the history of Ghost Drifts. They move in synchronicity, finish each other’s sentences, follow the perfect and exact trail of each other’s thoughts. For all those years they have spent arguing and fighting, they now seem to hold a complete understanding of the other. It’s freeing and exhilarating, it’s the purest of bliss; which is why, when it fades, when it stops, when they both return to the privacy of their heads— suddenly they are both reminded of a very cold winter night, in a cheap little hotel at the heart of Vienna.

Newt walks Hermann back to his quarters he knows by heart, by instinct, without stepping in there before. Everything feels familiar, natural and casual; that is, until Hermann stops him at the door.

“Thank you, Newton,” he says with a smile. Newt felt pushed back before the tips of Hermann’s fingers even reached him. “I’ll take it from here.”

“You— what? Dude, I’ve been in your head, you know I don’t sleep well when I’m alone. No—” He shakes his head. “— I know you don’t— Wait, no, I mean, one of us, one of us knows that the other—”

“It’s quite alright, we’ve both been drinking, it’s high time we found the comfort of our beds. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“But I want—”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Hermann repeats, in that same tone of voice he uses whenever Newt is being particularly himself.

Newt tries to protest but a jolt of pain hits him right behind his left eye. He folds on himself with a groan; when he looks up, he both sees himself through Hermann’s eyes, nose bleeding and dishevelled hair, and Hermann himself, one hand closed on his right eye, the other pressing a handkerchief to his nose.

“We must—”

“Medbay? Medbay now sounds like a great idea.”

“— Yes, it does.”

They do end up spending the night together, after all, because the medbay is full, there’s a shortage of beds, and neither will quite let go of the other, for all that they were on the edge of bickering earlier. But it’s an uncomfortable, awkward sort of night; the bed isn’t half as bad as beds in medical facilities can be, the temperature is pleasantly lukewarm, and the echoes of the partying faint and not bothersome… But there’s a ridge between them, now, an awkwardness; the question itself— “may I come in?”— is as troubling as the answer— “you may not”. After everything they’ve shared, after being in each other’s head, how can it come to this? To such a basic misunderstanding of each other’s wants and needs?

It’s Vienna all over again, the bitterness and the disappointment… but this time there is no anger, only incomprehension.

Morning comes and they are released from medical observation, with no clear explanation as to the reason for that little episode except for stress and exhaustion. They each go their separate ways, not willing to take any risk and overstep the other’s boundary.

———

**6.**

They don’t spend much time together the next day. The misunderstanding is still there, floating around them as they go about debriefings upon debriefings, withstanding the threat of a looming press conference. They’re heroes, or so they’re told. Of course, now that they have closed the Breach, the PPDC is happy to flaunt them and flatter them; such is the way of the world. Neither of them have given much thought to what they would do after the war; perhaps in the beginning, when it still seemed a little bit of a nightmare and not quite so very real. But as chaos became their way of life, survival and work consumed them so much they even stopped to dream.

They don’t dream much that night. They lay in their beds, sleepless and restless, trying to make sense of the nonsensical, mapping the ravine that keeps them apart in the very moment they should be closer than ever. They feel lonely and at the same time quite not alone in their own heads. There’s a perpetual tension, an ache in their chests. For hours they toss and turn and try to ignore the acute sensation that something is wrong, that the bed is too large, too cold, too small, too hot; that the walls are closing in, that the room is larger than they thought; that there’s a humming of a computer that’s turned off, that the silence is deafening.

They get up in a sweat and scramble for slippers and t-shirt before they can think themselves out of it; they open their doors— and find themselves face to face with each other in the corridor. 

“Hi”, Newt says. 

“Evening.” Hermann nods. “Newton, I-- “ 

“Dude, I wanted to say— Ah. Go ahead.” 

Newt steps out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. Hermann straightens his back, his hand on the handle of the door. 

“No. Please, tell me.” 

Newt steps forward and feels the strain on his left leg when Hermann’s body braces itself and digs his heels into the ground. 

“No, really, I mean, just… just say your thing.” 

Newt escalates as Hermann stills, the pattern they fall into feels almost comforting, familiar.

“I would rather much prefer-- “ 

“Hermann, please, you know, you know that I— that this isn’t gonna—” 

A door opens a little ahead and a sleepy Tendo Choi pokes his head out. “Guys… I never thought I’d be the one, never thought you’d be the ones I’d be telling this to either, but… Get a room? Some of us are still scheduled for a shift that starts in less than two hours.” 

Newt can feel Hermann’s embarrassment at being called out; he barely has the time to mumble an apology, then he is being ushered into Hermann’s room. It’s as neat and homely as he remembers it, as in that messy familiarity that tells of a very orderly man who’s had a lot on his plate recently. Except that he’s never been there, even if he knows where everything is. He doesn’t even feel like having a look around, or commenting on the smell— how can this room smell so musky, so old, so herbal, when Hermann has a window he could open?— or doing anything but taking a seat on the edge of the bed, where he knows that he won’t be disturbing anything Hermann doesn’t want him to touch. 

Hermann opens the window with a click of his tongue before busying himself with his little electric kettle and his little tea set. Newt breathes in the fresh night air, eyes fluttering closed. It’s cold, Hermann’s hip won’t like it… 

“So you do read my thoughts,” he says as his eyes open again. “The window and all.” 

“Nonsense.” Hermann shakes his head and doesn’t look up. “What… What was it that you wished to discuss?” 

Newt gets to his feet, reaching for the tray just before Hermann; he sticks his tongue out in a flash; Hermann tsks but places the cups and the pot on the tray without any further comment.

It smells nice, Newt thinks as he brings the tray back to the bed, Hermann hobbling along.

Newt knows the tea is mint and lime-blossom, even if he doesn’t know the smells themselves. He knows it because Hermann always drinks mint and lime-blossom at night when he can’t sleep. That one Newt knew from before, from the letters— he doesn’t want to think about the letters— 

Hermann clears his throat. Newt wraps his fingers around a cup he doesn’t remember being handed. 

“Were you thinking about the letters just now?” he asks, eyes in the golden-brown liquid. 

“Not at all,” Hermann lies. A beat. “Fine. I might have been. But that doesn’t—” 

“Dude, if we’re reading each other’s minds, I think we sort of should talk about it. And by ‘sort of should’ you know I mean ‘must in fact immediately do the thing’, right?”

“Yes, I do know what you mean,” Hermann says softly. Newt knows he isn’t looking up from his tea either. 

Things may or may not be getting a little crazy. 

“Hermann, we can’t—” 

“I do not know which thoughts are mine and what is the Ghost Drift,” Hermann admits. “I thought we were… I did think— I did think there was a lasting— a lingering connection there, yes. And then last night.” 

He hasn’t finished his sentence out loud, Newt realises, because he fully expects him to pick up where he left off. Hermann’s looking at him now, through those impossibly long eyelashes of his, and it takes Newt all of his strength not to tell him on the spot how beautiful his face is. How he could look at it all day and night long. Just his face, just looking. 

A little bit of a blush darkens Hermann’s cheekbones and Newt bites the inside of his mouth— yes. He can definitely hear his thoughts.

“And then last night I asked if I could come in when you didn’t expect me to and so you thought you were projecting.” 

Hermann takes a sip of his tea and nods. 

“I get it, cause when you said no that kinda threw me off my game too.” 

Hermann nods again. Newt swirls the tea in his cup. He’s starting to sort of remember he doesn’t, in fact, like herbal tea at all. It’s alright, he can take it. He’s done stints of surviving on energy drinks that weren’t the right brand, he can drink Hermann’s soothing evening mint.

Silence falls between them, quiet and companionable. They can’t count on the Ghost Drift, apparently, but that doesn’t mean they have to rush through the conversation. Those things take time; they have so many years of their relationship not to unlearn but to reassess and process differently. And it _is_ rather late, at that. At least they can both agree that the tension seems to be less unbearable when they are closer like this. Or can they? Is this a personal thought, or an echo of the Drift?

“I was worried,” Hermann says softly after a while, looking Newt’s way but not quite looking at Newt, “that you would be expecting changes in the parameters of our relationship I wasn’t ready to assume.”

“Dude, you’re gonna have to— Oh. You mean _sex_? Hermann, haven’t you been in my head? When’s the last time I’ve even had sex?”

Hermann looks up, brow furrowed. “Forgive me, I was under the impression that you never had.”

“Yes, exactly,” Newt says with a pointing finger, “there’s no last time because I’ve never wanted to even kiss anyone in my life. I mean no. I’ve been wanting to kiss people until it was, like, the actual moment of kissing them, at which point I usually freaked out, but that’s another can of worm, I mean…” He sighs. “I mean of all the things, like, you could have said that I was going to snore, or to hoard the duvet, or to complain about your white noise machine, or I don’t know what, but sex? Sex, Hermann, really? You _hate_ sex, man.”

“I do not—”

“You say you have complicated feelings about it, which is just a nice way to say you tried it, didn’t like it, and somehow felt like it was your fault not to have enjoyed it,” Newt says in a very firm tone, putting his cup aside, “and I don’t, I don’t get why you somehow thought—” A very distinct sensation is spreading through his stomach and his throat, ice cold and too hot at the same time; like anxiety, but worse. It’s not even his stomach. It’s not even his throat. “Sorry,” he adds, voice low. “That wasn’t a very nice way to, uh, to phrase it or a very nice thing to say at all.”

“It’s quite alright,” Hermann answers with a sigh. “I apologise for considering myself— for thinking that you would—”

“What? Dude, no, if I was gay I’d totally be into you. I mean, I am gay. But not like that. More like pan-romantic than pan-sexual. More like not even romantic, but I mean…”

Hermann puts his cup back on the tray and the tray on the nightstand. “I never quite understood what it meant,” he admits. He rubs his hands and his gaze finds Newt’s. “But then I never quite knew what it was exactly I felt for you either.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Newt shrugs. “It’s okay, man. Relationship anarchy, that’s where it’s at.”

Hermann snorts. “You don’t even know what that means, Newton.”

“Yes. Yes, I do. The fact that I’ve never had anyone to put the theory into practice doesn’t mean—” He’s interrupted by a loud yawn, so long and so deep that he has to hide his mouth with his hand, and he _knows_ Hermann is yawning too. “Oh… Oh, okay, it is late, yeah. Gotta get some rest. Especially you, you’ve been—”

“Stay.” Hermann’s hand rests on Newt’s wrist— no, it rests right above his wrist, barely brushing past the skin. “Please,” Hermann whispers. “You’re right. I sleep better when I’m not alone.”

Newt rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but there’s no point in trying to hide how utterly pleased he is with this development.

“Hug?” he asks with an outrageous fluttering of the eyelashes.

“One,” Hermann allows in a mock-stern tone. “Just the one.”

“I’ll make it last all night, then.”

“Hush.”

The sixth time it happens, they take their time to close the window, put the tea away and get themselves settled in; and they bicker about pillows and duvets and positions and room temperature, but as soon as Newt hooks his leg under Hermann’s to support his hip and Hermann’s arms hold him even closer and warmer, they fall silent. Here at last, they have stillness, they have comfort, they have peace.

“Hey, Herms?”

“Mmh?”

“I think we’re gonna have an early Spring.”

“Mmh.”

“… Wanna go— I wanna go to Japan in April. Wanna see the cherry blossom, let’s go and see the cherry trees blooming in Japan, Hermann. Mh? Tell me we’ll go.”

“Mmh.”

“I know you’re not sleeping. Say yes to the cherry trees.”

“Hush, Newton. Hush. Sleep, now.”

“But Hermann…”

“Newton… May I touch your hair?”

“Uh? Sure? Fine? Go ahead, I guess. But you won’t escape my plan so easily. See, there’s this small family inn in Kyoto, right, that’s the city with all the temples, you’ll love it, and when I was there…”

Hermann’s fingers bury deep but soft into Newt’s hair, gently scratching at his scalp, and he forgets what he was going to say entirely. He sleeps before he knows it. And when he wakes, all warm and cosy in a room that still faintly smells of tea, he thinks that for all he knows it might indeed be Spring already.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and thank you for reading! This was written for the wonderful retrovertigo's birthday. If you enjoy newmann, asexual intimacy and queerplatonic relationships, you do want to check out their fic, [Lay Down Your Armor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058103/chapters/2119782) (and wish them a happy birthday!). Best wishes on your special day, I hope you enjoy this little thing!
> 
> Thank you so much to [@nathan](https://twitter.com/nathanlaj) for beta-reading this on such a short notice! All remaining typos, etc, are my own.
> 
> Let me know what you thought in the comments, or get in touch with me on [tumblr](http://seaweedredandbrown.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/overlaured)~


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